Random Acts: Karl Sadler & Chris Saunders

These dancers from Johannesburg's Real Action Pantsula Dance crew will make you smile and move your feet

'Process V3' is a dangerously uplifting Dazed & Confused-commissioned short that brings together artist Karl Sadler and filmmaker Chris Saunders. Spectacularly dressed dancers in Johannesburg were captured on video by Chris without musical accompaniment, and Karl was then sent the edited footage to put a soundtrack to. The track was put together in collaboration with Tom Gillieron, who sliced and diced the recorded audio on a borrowed laptop in his parent's atttic. If you can watch it without smiling broadly or wanting to dance, you have no soul.

Play it loud, play it again, play it louder and dance. 'Process V3' was screened on Channel 4 as part of Random Acts, a series of new three-minute shorts by established and upcoming artists. Dazed Digital spoke with sound artist Karl Sadler about the process of gathering the music for the film.

Dazed Digital: What was your first reaction when you saw the footage of the dancers?Karl Sadler: I really liked the portrait aspect-ratio Chris uses, and the locked-off shots that allow you to really concentrate and see the dancers movement excited me. I guess my first impression of the final film footage was of the vividness and attitude of the dancers. I actually felt a little intimidated by it, which is good.

DD: The music sounds quite dystopian compared to the images. Was that a contrast you were after?Karl Sadler: Yeah. It's odd. In my head I had these sonic visions of heavy, brash crazy-bpm stuff, but I really wanted to avoid that. I wanted to push the music creation as a process, which is different to how I usually work. I tried to keep this strict and try and develop a new sound. It sounds quite broken.

DD: With what and where did you create the music?Karl Sadler: I wanted to make up a collage of sounds captured from where I live and work. So that contrast and roughness is intentional. I bought a little sound recorder and just started walking around, taking snapshots of sounds, strapping it to my bike, cycling to Kings Cross, recording the trains, pigeons, the squeaky escalators inside Brixton Station and the steel pans and charity workers outside. I wanted to keep a bit of that attitude in there too without it going too melodic.